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Chronicler of New York Leaves the Scene

By David Gonzalez September 8, 2008 4:32 pmSeptember 8, 2008 4:32 pm

Ed Vega in front of his Brooklyn home in 2005. (Photo: Ting-Li Wang/The New York Times)

My call went straight to voice mail.

“Hi, this is Ed Vega,” came the muffled message that sounded more obligatory than outgoing. “If you want to reach me on another phone try …” he went on, before lapsing into a quick string of numbers in the 718. And then, just to be polite, he added: “O.K. Take care. Bye.”
I figured he was just working on one of several novels he was writing. He felt an urgent need to write, and not just because money was running short. He had spent this summer reeling after his publisher canceled his latest book. So he wrote about that, too, with equal measures of heartbreak and fury.

As it turns out, that recorded voice was the last goodbye I’d ever hear from Ed.

I had called last Thursday, after his agent, Tom Colchie, told me he had not seen or heard from Ed in several weeks. The reason emerged by midday.

On Aug. 25, Ed went to Brooklyn’s Lutheran Hospital and died there; we have yet to hear from his doctors why. His agent was the first to learn, almost two weeks later because of some administrative mix-up.

Edgardo Vega Yunqué, writer, Puerto Rican and New Yorker, was 72. His novels captured the crazy glory of this city and its people, with jazzy riffs and elegant solos that flowed with rhythm. His words could dazzle, amuse and even infuriate. He forged worlds filled with memorable characters.

Ed was a complicated man. He had alienated many people over the years, including agents who sought to promote him and editors who tried to tame his copy. A Buddhist and jazzhead, he had wide ranging interests. Unfortunately, that sometimes meant his copy went off on needless tangents. He was generous with younger writers – some of whom ignored him once they tasted success. He was not close to his family in recent years.

Then again, over the three decades of our friendship, we never exchanged a single word in anger. Granted, I never edited him.

He was born in Puerto Rico, where he lived until he was 13. His father was a Baptist minister, and their home was a salon of sorts where literature and poetry were a normal part of life. He moved to New York and settled in Mott Haven in the Bronx, which was then a heavily Irish neighborhood. The Celtic influence would be evident in later works, where Irish-American characters figured prominently.

The family soon moved to East Harlem, where he got to know some of local guys who later became writers, like Jack Agüeros. After high school, he joined the Air Force. Around the same time, he stumbled on a trove of hundreds of paperback books, which became his introduction to Steinbeck, Faulkner and other American writers.

He returned to the States and married. He studied Latin American literature at New York University, but did not graduate. He wrote and tried to publish. To pay the bills, he took a series of jobs at non-profit organizations. That’s how we met in 1980, when we both worked in Harlem at different economic development agencies. We had a common bond: we toiled at soul-deadening jobs that had nothing to do with writing.

He kept writing, and in 1985 published his first novel, “The Comeback,” whose plot involved a Puerto Rican-Eskimo hockey star and revolutionary politics. Ed actually had been a hockey Dad years ago (which only raises the tantalizing question what he would have made of this year’s Republican vice presidential candidate).

In all our encounters, he was always encouraging, especially when my spirits were low. I had come to New York one summer day in 1988 after having spent time covering mayhem in Haiti. I was staying at a fancy midtown hotel and was edgy amid the comfort.

Ed got me to walk to Puerto Rico. That’s right: walk.

He must have heard the desperation in my voice when he told me to jump on the Number 6 train to 116 Street and come to his house. I did, and immediately we traipsed a few blocks over to what was a small villa of Caribbean shacks complete with vegetable gardens and chickens.

O.K., it was community garden ringed by abandoned buildings. But as Ed ushered me inside past the chain link gate, we were treading on Puerto Rican territory. His eyes beamed with delight at this blissfully subversive act of nationalistic affirmation.

Ed was proudly Puerto Rican, and not in the T-shirt and flag-waving way. He respected his bloodlines, both as a writer and as a political being. He was a founder of the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center on the
Lower East Side, named after the Puerto Rican poet and nationalist (who initially had been buried an unmarked grave in Puerto Rico). Ed saw the big picture, but was not gifted in the arts of administration. His tenure there did not go well, but his departure left him with more time to write.

Ed’s vision of Puerto Ricans was decidedly not limited to the swaggering Ghetto Papis that sprang from the imaginations of twenty-something kids keeping-it real.

In a wide-ranging 2006 interview [pdf], he made a point of distancing himself from any genre that would limit Puerto Ricans characters to long-suffering abuelitas and prison-ready drug dealers. While he grew up in a middle class home in East Harlem, he was angry at the larger society.

“They don’t understand us; that we have an identity,” he said in the interview. “They always want to make us to be ghetto people and gang people.”

Ed wanted to be seen as a writer. Not a “writer of color,” a term that was certain to set him off (though truth be told, a lot of things could rile him). This is not to say he shied away from dealing with issues of Puerto Rican identity. But he felt his books were literature first and foremost.

The novel for which he is best known certainly was treated that way. Its genesis, he said, was when he saw a family playing music in the subway. The novel would become this sprawling epic about the collision of race, class and family in America, rendered with grace, humor, love and heartbreak. The title was as long as the book was ambitious: “No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain’t Never Coming Home Again.”

The “symphonic novel” chronicles the life of Billy Farrell, an Irish kid and jazz piano prodigy whose hand is mangled in Vietnam. Back in New York, he falls in love with Elsa Santiago, a Puerto Rican girl from the Lower East Side. They have a child, Vidamia. They go their separate ways. And then their lives reconnect, and criss-cross, actually. Unspeakable tragedies happen, the kinds that make readers stop and cry.

And then, life goes on. Slowly, ordinarily, musically. It goes on.

Reviewers called it “stunningly written” and “a powerhouse of a novel.” One critic declared he was following in the tradition of Ralph Ellison and William Faulkner.

Ed could not resist poking fun at artists he felt were not true to their craft or respectful of readers. He once created a character named “Potatoes Rivera,” his way of mocking a certain Nuyorican poet whose reputation rests on tired word-shtick from the 1970s.

Another time he was at an East Harlem bar, toting an armful of his books to give to Dylcia Pagan, a former Puerto Rican political prisoner. A local artist whose name had faded from the scene greeted him with the taunt: “What are you dong Ed, carrying your library?”

Without missing a beat, Ed shot back, “You’re just jealous you can’t carry your paintings around to show people.”

Ed loved New York, and it showed in his writings. Unfortunately, the city did not reward his ardor. His final book, a satirical faux-memoir he wrote under the name Rebecca Horowitz, was cancelled by the publisher a few months ago. There were issues over editing. Big issues, he felt. The original title was “How That Dirty Rotten Charlie Maisonet Turned Me Into A Puerto Rican Sex Freak.”

The last few months were not easy. Last winter, with money running low, he gave up his Sunset Park apartment for a room in a private house. Before he left, he euthanized his cat, thinking the creature would not have been comfortable in his new digs: a tiny room with just enough space for a bed and a desk.

I saw him every couple of weeks for lunch, where we talked about writing, New York and Puerto Ricans. Sometimes we would just drive and listen to Monk. I’d drop him off at his home, across the street from Green-Wood Cemetery. As I drove off, I wondered what he was thinking, having gone from being an overnight sensation in his mid-60s to now, cooped up in a room overlooking a graveyard.

I do know this: He wrote every day.

Ed had a certain discipline. He ticked off a lot of people. He made unreasonable demands. He held grudges, too. But he also held himself to his own standard. He wanted to get it right.

And in his writing, he did. At his best, his voice was authentic, true to the island of his birth and the city of his life. In his books, the voice persists, carrying us to a place where we talk, fight, fall in love and groove to the music of his words.

Ed Vega Yunque was a brilliant writer and you’ve captured his spirit in this wonderful piece. When i rec’d the “bill bailey..” novel i read the first ten pages standing in my office and felt that i had come upon something so exquisite that i needed to take it in slowly so i walked around with that big fat book for most of july reading every spare minute. he was a complicated man from a generation of Puerto Ricans who really struggled to hold on to their aunthentiic voice. I hope your article will inspire many to pick up his books and that Ed will descansar en paz.
Rossana Rosado

This article has me, how to put it: “choca’o”. On my night stand are two of Ed Vega’s novels. Both are “advanced readers’ copies” and one of them is the canceled Rebecca Horowitz novel, which makes me, probably, one of the few people to have ever read it.

After reading the first 70 or 80 pages of the Horowitz novel I thought it was going to be one of the best and most daring books ever published about the Latino experience. Now, by the time I’d read the other 260 pages I had changed my mind significantly.

Horowitz began as one of the most comic, brilliant, playful, erotic and convincing forays into the art of the modern novel, and in the exploration of Latin-ness that I’d read in a long time, then gradually, the wheels started coming off until the book finally crashed into its final sentence. It continued, however, to be bold and daring to the last word.

I remember thinking the Horowitz novel is either a really awful, terrible great book, or a great lousy novel. In either case, there was something sort of great about Mr. Yunque. Was it Faulkner who said you had to try and fail big? Mr. Vega certainly made that sort of effort. Of that I have no doubt and for that he merits the praise of art’s most serious practitioners.

The brother emailed me back. In a day and age when there is no reason for any writer to want to mentor anyone, even with the most simplistic email reply, Ed took the time out to write back and answer anything you asked him. I found out about him through a colleague and soon after stumbled upon Omaha Bigelow. One of the best first paragraphs ever. (Loved the novel, but saw some flaws and thought that with the right amount of editing, he could become universally appealing…) Actually, called a few publishers and wanted to see if I could get enough copies for a class I am currently teaching. Of course that wasn’t possible. Reading your article, I understand more about not only Ed the writer, but also Ed the person. Thank you. I’m not sure I was aware of it initially, but you’ve made it pretty clear: he wrote about what he loved, hated, couldn’t stand, and what couldn’t ever get away from. And never hid it. That takes resolve. I truly hope someone rescues his manuscripts, of which he wrote he had over a dozen completed ones, and publishes them. There is much to learn from his work.

We at PRdream.com truly regret the passing of this fine Puerto Rican/American writer who proved to be so versatile with the English language while maintaining a profound understanding of the Nuyorican experience. On so many occasions, we met and planned to have Ed do an oral history! We never got to do it, regretfully. He had so much to impart to all of us, as his books clearly indicate.

On Saturday, November 15, between 3PM – 7PM, we are planning a tribute to Edgardo Vega Yunque by reading another dazzling work of his: The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle. I can only describe this novel as “magical realism comes to Loisaida”. We are located at 1355 Park Avenue, Corner Store, at East 102nd Street.
Bring your copy. We are looking for readers who would like to sign up to seriously work on reading for ten to fifteen minutes. Please contact Judy atescalona@prdream.com. Thank you.

We also welcome other organizations who might want to sponsor the tribute along with us.

He was born May 20, 1936, a date to be commemorated because he was truly a great writer and contributed to a transnational, transcultural body of literature that is so much a part of what New York City really is all about.

What an honest and wonderful portrait of Ed Vega! He was our next door neighbor when he and his family lived on Broadway and W. 102nd St. in the late 60s and 70s (not mentioned in the article) Your piece captures the complexity and the many dimensions of his personality -intense, insightful, forceful, complicated and difficult. It was a hard time for him, struggling to get his writings published. When he did publish, his beautiful and sensitive writings about people and urban landscapes showed a different and much more delicate inner self.

Thank you, David, for such a great piece. I only hope that our Puerto Rican and Latino community can look pass his social “complexity” and make time to explore his work — one of the very few things he asked of us. I am glad to have shared time with him, to exchange ideas with him. I remember someone from our Puerto Rican cultural intelligentsia circle belittling Ed because of a past verbal scuff. “Have you read any of his work?” I asked. “He offended me, I wouldn’t read anything of his,” she replied. This was part of the embarrassing nonsense that Ed criticized a lot, in person and in his work. “This is part of the reason why Puerto Rico is still a colony,” he would joke.

Thank you, David, for such a great piece. I only hope that our Puerto Rican and Latino community can look pass his social “complexity” and make time to explore his work — one of the very few things he asked of us. I am glad to have shared time with him, to exchange ideas with him. I remember someone from our Puerto Rican cultural intelligentsia circle belittling Ed because of a past verbal scuff. “Have you read any of his work?” I asked. “He offended me, I wouldn’t read anything of his,” she replied. This was part of the embarrassing nonsense that Ed criticized a lot, in person and in his work. “This is part of the reason why Puerto Rico is still a colony,” he would joke.

Yes, David, you captured a certain kind of fastidious, pessimistic optimism that had an undercurrent of real sweetness and affection. He cared deeply –and not merely in a politically rhetorical way– about his connection to Puerto Rico. He cared about connections, genealogies, links…as his books show. Whenever I saw him–and sometimes years would go by–he would always recognize me with affection and a certain sad sweetness in his voice that would surprise me, because it seemed innocent and guileless and brotherly.

Finally a piece that does Edgardo Vega some serious justice…THANK YOU!!!!!! It and the posts act as a balm to the shock and profound sadness upon hearing of Edgar’s passing. I had known Edgar only for the past five+ years, after he came to the University of Puerto Rico to read from Bill Bailey. He did have a tendency to be so blunt as to offend, but he cracked me up and made me nostalgic for New York (in person and in his work). We had been in close touch of late, since his Rebecca Horowitz novel had been pulled at the last minute, even after it had appeared in catalogs. When I saw him in July, he gave me the chapters ommitted without his consent to read and they were funny as hell, in that hyperbolically irreverant style of his, and offered a fine-tuned critique of literature of the Puerto Rican diaspora, writ large. He had written a nearly-book length response to the publication cancellation titled “Spic: Writing Under the Threat of Censorship in the United States.” He was also working on a history of Sunset Park, with beautiful historical photos, intimating an intense sense of belonging to the place he was having an increasingly difficult time affording. Just days before I heard of his passing, I had mailed him a solid piece (by Robert Friedman) that appeared in The San Juan Star about the Rebecca Horowitz controversy; the cover story that day was about the release and parole of the killers at Cerro Maravilla and amazingly the next day The San Juan Star folded. Largely due to the legacy of Manny Suarez’s reporting on Cerro Maravilla from the Star, this was all very deep to me, as I’m sure it would have been to him. That same week I received a copy of his latest novel Blood Fugues in the mail; his inscription signed off with “Hasta la victoria siempre”…resonating with what I have learned of a generation of independentistas “hecho de otra manera,” as a friend of mine often says. Rather than a retrograde cliché, I would like to take that line as Edgar’s send off…Pa’lante indeed.
Thanks again for this cyber-tribute piece and for all the posts. PEACE to you Edgar.

Please excuse me, because I’m sorry, but you are partly misinformed. I am speaking of the man, not the writer. My sincere apologies to those who admired him. Ed Vega was many things, both positive and negative. Martyr is not on the list. He was more than difficult or cantankerous. Having his cat put to death (rather than giving it away) because he didn’t want to share a smaller living space and was angry at the world is Ed Vega to a T. He hurt people for no other reason than that he was, at times, cruel and sadistic, and had power over them. As is often the case with such people, he was also quite deceptive. Fear of him – for he could be savagely violent, at least towards persons weaker than himself – has perhaps kept silent some who knew about him. If so, that should stop today.

I am a Student of Ed Yunque Vega from College At Old Westbury, 1972-1976. I am the person responsible for bringing Ed to the Lower East Side in the mid seventies. In Westbury all the Latino students were terrified of him because he would be particularly harsh on us as he expected more from us than other students.
I on the other hand was a Navy Vietnam Veteran raised in the Lower East Side and he respected me as a Veteran. From our first encounter I held my own with him which wasn’t easy by no means. You see, as a kid of 12 I was tutored by Paul Goodman in the First Street School. The first Montessori School In the United States, 47 East 1st Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue. Paul completed his PHD there and wrote a book,”The Lives Of Children, in the street school.” With George Dennison his associate; of which I am in. Ed loved the Academics and always thrived in it. At Westbury I was one of Paul Goodman’s children in the Educational department with Donald and Betrice Gross both PHD’s and others including Ed Vega, Samuel Quinones, Billy Byd Forteza. in the early 70’s Westbury was the place to be to receive a great radical education. I was very ambitious from the start. Westbury was a newly built School and the possibilities were endless. I started the College Newspaper called, “El Movimiento Latino,” which later became “the Catalyst,” when the Black students protested and said we were monopolizing the resources and being to Nationalistic, and a magazine called,”Street Cries and Whispers.” Dedicated to publishing short stories and poetry. I helped create the Student government and Alianza Latina still active today. During this time, I was involved in the most avant-guard Puerto Rican Theater group and we use to preactice in Westbury, Called, El Teatro Ambulante,” So
I introduced Ed Vega to our Theater President Don Jorge Brandon, “El Coco Que Habla,” and the Artistic Director, Bittman Bimbo Rivas. I was also part of Cuando inc in the lower east Side from the late sixties. “Culturas Unidas Aspirando Nuestro Destino Original.” “Cultural Understanding and Neighborhood Development Oranization.” An organization we founded in Paul’s memory when he passed away to continue educating our Community at 9 East Second Avenue. It is this Literary movement in the Lower East Side in the early 70’s that drew Ed Vega down down to Loisaida like a moth to the flame. Where he met other intellectuals, artist, musicians, writers, like Mikey Pinero, Lucky Cin Fuego, Bimbo Rivas, Pedro Pietri, Piri Thomas, Carlos Dufflar, Miguel Algarin and many others. It was a magical time with so much art and talent it was brimming over. Like when we had El Teatro Ambulante, El Teatro Piruli, and El Teatro Elephante on East 6th street between Avenues A and B. But El Coco Que Habla was the magnet that brought us all together to create and inspire all of this and, “The Nuyorican Cafe.” I was very close with Ed throughout the years and often spent time with him at Clemente Soto Velez Center named after one of Don Jorge Brando’s personal friends along with Julia De Burgos. Brandon Clemente and Julia use to kick it together. Ed heard all the same stories we heard from our teacher Don Brandon. The sad part of this whole loss which made me cry like a baby is Ed Vega died just Julia De Burgos died and Brandon. Two weeks in the Freezer before anybody realized he was missing. He ran the risk of being Buried in Potters field just like Julia what a bazaar set of coincidences.
I always considered Ed Vega one of the most intellectual Academic writers in our Puerto Rican Culture. Ed heard first hand, how Jorge Brandon the Poet Geneo was black listed by his people and never given any acknowledgement as one of the most intellectual Poetic figures in our culture. Our Puerto Rico’s most illustrious Poet died with no fan fare or praise from the people he lived and died for. Now For Ed Yunque Vega to have died like this too. Not to have had the compassion the love the praises he deserved from us the people who loved and he loved. like we did for Pedro Pietri, Bimbo, Brandon, and Mikey, this just breaks my heart. I loved and adored Ed Vega, he played Ernesto In Bimbo’s play, “El Piraguero De Loisaida.” At the Orpheum theater when we saved it from the City wrecking ball and renovated it ourselves with Bimbo’s leadership and community raised money. As I look at my photos I realize a large part of my life has gone but never forgotten. “Palante Ambulante como un Elephante was our moto in, “El Teatro Amubulante.” It touched my heart to know he kept using the phrase… Palante Ambulante como un Elephante….

David González is to be commended for this very moving piece on Ed Vega. I remember always seeing Ed at the Clemente Soto Vélez, where he was always very gracious towards me. I look forward to reading his novels and getting to know him in a very different way. His death is a great loss for Nuyorican and American literature.

I regreted hearing that Ed Vega passed away. I read a few of his books and decided The man truly had a way with words and told an excellent story. A word smith if ever there were one. I knew him as ‘EVY’ in the AUTHOR’S LOUNGE. I appreciated his at times, harsh humor. He used to say to me: “I’m published and you’re not! Live with it!” I’m sure Evy will be missed by everyone who ever knew him.

Evy. That was our Evy who died. I’m called Sing in AOL’s Authors Lounge, and for the past eight years I have been in that chatroom with everyone. EVY was a standout. He was an angry, EXTREMELY cutting type of man who intrigued me to the point of me developing a secret crush on him….dreaming of what it would be like to take off and go live near him, see what might happen. He was deliciously provocative, and challenged us all, challenged our political beliefs, challenged us to publish and get ourselves together, such as he was always doing…

As a suffering mom, waiting for my ‘taken’ boy to get older, I leaned on the Lounge in my frantic/depressed state, and Evy’s humor, along with all the bickering back and forth, which always ended up with a great time, I found comfort in the highly energized state of the room during Evy’s presence there. He absolutely was ELECTRIC, and some people would leave the room due to the fact they simply couldn’t keep up with him! I am envious of the folks who TRULY knew him. His death was as a tsunami going over the Authors Lounge and drowning many of us in sorrow and regret that we didn’t tell Evy how very beloved he was, when he was still alive.

I only met Ed Vega once. It was Thanksgiving day in 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Ed angered me with his critical comments about U.S. policy. I was focused on what had been done to us, not the supposed wrongs our country did. I worked downtown and the wounds were still raw. I didn’t like what Ed was saying, and I let him know that. Over time, my thinking has evolved. I’ve often thought about Ed’s comments that Thanksgiving day. I’m sorry he’s not with us anymore.

I did not know Ed Vega or his writings, but I knew of him from the biographies of his step daughter, a singer and songwriter whose artistry I have admired for more than two decades. Reading the piece by David Gonzalez and some of the comments about it really moved me. With affection, my condolences to Paul and Suz and Ruby, to Aly, and to the rest of the family for your loss.

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